A Thousand Teeth, and Yours Among Them
by narcolepticbadger
Summary: Regina makes the choice that Robin can't: she erases her memories of their relationship in order to force his hand. To everyone's horror, she underestimates the strength of the potion and unleashes the Evil Queen on Storybrooke, destroying far more than her second chance at love. [Outlaw Queen. Ignores canon after 4x07]
1. Part I

For any readers of _rise like an ember in your name_, I think this fic fits quite nicely with the Regina/Robin relationship I've set up over there, picking up after chapter 5 or 6. Consider this story an alternate ending (my preferred resolution for the love triangle nonsense) while _rise_ continues to more-or-less follow canon.

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><p>Robin covered the space between them absurdly fast, like an animal breaking free from the cage that had held it too long, and she rocked backwards as he kissed her, grateful for the arms that came around to steady her before she could lose her balance completely.<p>

Robin pulled her upright, and Regina came willingly, deepening the kiss as his hand slid up the knobs of her spine and settled in her hair, strong fingers curling against her scalp. Both of them, deprived so long of the other's touch, fought for control, for power, as their basic desires took over, and they started an uneven, stumbling, aggressive tour of the room. Glass crunched under their feet from the vials they knocked off the table, and Robin hissed suddenly when he banged his shin into a low wooden chest. Regina couldn't help smirking against his lips at the sound, which Robin seemed to take as some sort of challenge and pressed into her more fervently than ever.

He was hard against her, he tasted of whiskey, and Regina was sparking with _need_, her whole body tense with wanting him. They glanced off of a wall, mouths and hands still greedily searching, and finally Robin managed to pin them both against it, anchoring them in place long enough for them both to draw back and breathe for what felt like the first time in minutes.

It only took three breaths to sober her, to bring reality crashing down around them, and from the way Robin had turned his head to the side as he panted, she expected he was experiencing the same sudden awareness of the knife's edge they stood on, how close they had come to rushing headlong off of it and ruining everything.

She slowly detangled her hands from his clothing and skin and placed them on his chest instead, defensive and intimate in one, feeling the quickness of his heart (_use mine for the both of us_) there under her palms, a pulsing that strummed down to her very bones.

"Robin…we can't."

He stood with one arm braced on the wall behind them, the other hand possessively circling her hip, and rested his forehead against hers while sighing heavily, bitterly.

"I know."

"Then why did you…?"

"I just needed to touch you, Regina. I, I needed to _feel_ something again. Don't think it's easy for me, watching you back away from me a little more every day because it's not '_right_' for us to be together. That's not what I wanted."

He closed his eyes as he spoke, as if it pained him to look at her, and she knew that feeling all too well.

"You have a wife and a son, a band of men, responsibilities to all of them, and, as much as we –"

She couldn't bring herself to use the word _love_, not while the air was still volatile between them, not while she watched Robin's jaw tighten with each word that came out of her mouth, not while she had to raise her voice to quell the protest building in his body, in the mutinous expression that transformed his face into something feral.

"As much as we…care for each other, there's no other choice to make."

Robin ripped himself away from her, a dark, humorless laugh breaking from him as he paced in front of her. "You think I don't know that? I have everything I've wanted my whole life. I should be _ecstatic_."

He stopped moving long enough to punctuate that word with a look that left her flinching, and all the fight seemed to run out of him at once.

"But I'm not. I mean, I _am _happy, but it's not…all the vows and all the long-lost loves in the world don't mean as much when your heart belongs to someone else."

They studied each other for a long moment in the gloom of the vault, Robin pocketing his hands as if to restrain himself from taking hold of her again, and Regina thought, _it's almost too perfect, to have our end in a mausoleum filled with stolen hearts_.

She was glad to have the wall behind her, capable of holding her weight, because her legs were dangerously close to giving out on her, and she hadn't even said the words yet.

"I think you should leave."

Robin knew it was coming, must have known, but he staggered anyway, his face registering pain before closing itself to her, and that was how she was sure he understood what she was really asking of him: _don't come back_. The near-misses, the exchange of cautious, yearning looks and help and _kisses_ was killing them both, and she couldn't keep letting Robin go only for him to show up on her doorstep yet again, begging things that she was powerless to deny him.

This was quite possibly the last time they would ever be alone together.

Robin hesitated, lingered, waiting for her to give him one final look before he walked away, but she turned from him instead, counted to nineteen before she heard the clap of his boots against the stone floor. She listened for the screech of metal that signaled the door closing behind him before she let her shoulders sag, clawing at the wall for support, and nearly jumped out of her skin at the loud, metallic clang that shook the chamber, just once, as if Robin had thrown something heavy against her door.

His fists, probably. Robin had never been one for subtlety when it came to his emotions.

Her vault was thrown into disarray during their (thankfully, regretfully) short descent into madness, and she felt compelled to begin the long process of cleaning it up, picking up every piece of glass and every overturned furnishing by hand, as if she could stop herself from shattering if she tried hard enough to fix the physical damage in front of her.

She focused on identifying which jars and vials lay broken on the floor, checking for dangerous or corrosive substances, and paused when she found a half-cracked box marked 'aletheiam.' She stared at it, something stirring in the back of her mind as she repeated the word again and again and struggled to remember its meaning. The box smelled faintly of flowers, or earth after a heavy rain, and she smiled when she realized what she was holding.

It was the answer she had been looking for. The only way to ensure that Robin never returned for her, as neither of them could be trusted anymore, he too kind and she too weak to know how to break their own hearts.

She set the box aside and more hurriedly took stock of the remaining potion supplies, hoping they hadn't smashed enough ingredients to stop her from doing what she intended to do.

…

It had been years since Rumplestiltskin had taught her this particular mixture, and her movements were cautious at first, choosing and measuring ingredients slowly until her hands found their old rhythm and produced several swallows' worth of sky-blue liquid.

She toyed with the flask, wondering if there was a way to test the potion before she used it on herself, but that would mean involving other people – people who would undoubtedly try to convince her that there was a better way to resolve the increasingly clichéd love triangle she had fallen into. So, no, testing was out.

She reached for a piece of paper instead. She was about to erase a significant chunk of her recent memory, and she needed to communicate that to _somebody _while she was still aware of what she was doing. Somebody who could disseminate that information to everyone else and, preferably, find a way to keep Robin from doing anything stupid to try and reverse the spell.

The list of people that she trusted (not including Robin, for obvious reasons) was short – one might say non-existent – but Regina finally settled on Mary Margaret. She had power. The town listened to her. And though their relationship could not be readily defined, Regina knew that whether Mary Margaret approved of her decision or not, the girl would understand what she was doing and see her through.

She scrawled a note, giving away no more than the essential details, what she needed Mary Margaret to do after the potion had taken effect, and where Mary Margaret could find a soon-to-be-very-confused Regina. She summoned a raven to deliver it.

The only thing that remained was for her to drink.

The potion's color was beautiful, cycling through all shades of water and sky as she regarded it. It reminded her most of Robin's eyes, of how soon they would be lost to her, and she felt tears building in her throat, burning at the corners of her vision as she blinked.

She would not let them fall. She drank.

…

She was lying on something hard, something decidedly _not_ her bed, and it was far too quiet for her to be within the castle walls. She was alone. She opened her eyes slowly, trying to bring the room into focus as her head pounded, and she groaned theatrically, content to express her current state of misery out loud even if no one was around to hear it.

Her surroundings took shape in pieces, and she pushed herself into a sitting position to get a better view. _How_ _lovely_, Regina thought, _you've fallen asleep in some sort of fancy underground storage room and have no idea how you got here. Mother would be so proud._

She shifted again, letting out a stream of curses that would make any man blush – she knew; she took particular pleasure in exercising that power over her guards on a regular basis – as her joints cracked loudly with the movement, the knot in her back announcing itself painfully. She felt like she had aged decades in however long she had been knocked out.

She rose, balance wavering, to her feet and frowned down at her dress: red and tight, just as she liked, but revealing much more skin than she could ever remember showing outside of her bedroom. She ran a self-conscious hand through her hair, only to find that it stopped short at her shoulders, her hand hanging uselessly in the air as if it couldn't quite process the sudden absence.

A quick study of the chamber she was stuck inside only increased her bewilderment: Regina had never been in this room in her life, and yet she could sense that it was undeniably _hers_. She recognized some of the magic books piled on the floor, she saw that the table of potion ingredients was arranged in her own peculiar style, and she ran her hands lovingly over the cabinet that housed heart after torn-out heart. So much was _familiar_, achingly so, but she could come up with no explanation for her altered appearance, her sense of lost time, her inelegant awakening other than the most obvious: magic.

She narrowed her eyes. _This has the fingerprints of the Imp all over it_, she thought venomously, immediately drawing her magic like a cloak around her and receiving another shock from how stiff and unwieldy magic seemed to be in this place.

It required careful concentration, and she had to start all over several times when she lost her tenuous hold on the threads she was mentally weaving, but she eventually stood clothed in a plum-colored, slightly-more-modest-but-no-less-snug dress and leather boots that added inches to her height. Her face already sharpened with makeup, she did what she could with the shorn hair, huffing at the lack of volume she achieved and nearly pouting at her reflection in the mirror as she tried to determine if she had truly aged or if she was just out-of-sorts from the aftereffects of whatever magic had been applied to her.

Rumplestiltskin would pay for this latest bit of mischief.

She was no closer to remembering where she was or what had happened, but she felt less nauseous than before and was growing increasingly confident in her control of this world's magic – and she was in another world, she would bet her kingdom on it – as strange as it was.

She looked once more around the comfortingly dismal chamber and, satisfied that she was not leaving anything useful behind, stepped towards the door, wondering what awaited her aboveground.

She would summon Rumplestiltskin when she reached open air, and she would have her answers.

…

The world outside proved even more mystifying for Regina. She was in the middle of a city, the likes of which she had never seen before. She held her magic tightly around her, the best shield she had, as she confronted each strange building, each unfamiliar object that her brain nevertheless supplied a name for. _Car. Streetlight. Mailbox. _

She inhaled deeply before calling for Rumplestiltskin, pleased that her voice didn't waver around the edges and less pleased when the Imp failed to appear. Doubt began to settle in, but she battled it back as much as she could and walked on.

She encountered no other people at first, but she found herself ducking into a side-alley at the sound of approaching voices, suddenly feeling too vulnerable, too exposed, to face anyone while she was so uncertain of her surroundings. She closed her eyes against the influx of sounds (people laughing, 'cars' whipping by faster than any horses, a baby crying) and tried to get her bearings again, to find something that she understood.

Clarity remained tantalizingly just beyond her grasp, and the harder she tried to corner her thoughts, to force herself to remember, the faster they fled. Laughter rang out again, this time so close that her muscles jolted, concentration broken, and an irrationally large plume of irritation licked up her spine.

They weren't mocking her with their laughter – she wasn't _that _delusional – but their levity, their carefree approach to this cursed place needled her all the same, and she could feel magic rising through her in response to her scattered emotions: confusion, frustration, and that underlying anger that drove so many actions in her life.

They weren't with Rumplestiltskin. They weren't responsible for bringing her here. But they would taste her vengeance all the same – she wasn't one to discriminate. Everyone had something they deserved to suffer for.

Regina schooled her face into the icy mask made to strike fear into the hearts of her inferiors and marched out of the alleyway. She caught the attention of the few people on the street immediately, and she grinned ferociously at their expressions of shock, suddenly thrilled to be back on the hunt.

She pushed at a passing car with her magic, testing her strength, and was delighted to see how it skidded away from her with the slightest nudge, how easily the metal crumpled as it crashed to a stop against – what was it? – ah, yes, the _telephone pole_.

Destruction, it seemed, was the same wherever she went, and the pleasure of it, of watching things _burn_ at her hand, coursed through her in a dizzying rush. _This_ was who she was. Someone with power. Someone who decided fates. Someone who tore down cities and emerged from the rubble unscathed.

Magic flowed through her, and she released it aimlessly as she stalked down the middle of the road. Windows shattered. A building collapsed on itself, baring its own foundations. Streetlights shot electricity overhead in tiny explosions. The ground shook until a chasm opened in front of her, widening and swallowing objects too quickly for her to name as peasants with stupid, terrified faces scurried away and screamed.

She threw back her head and laughed, feeling sane for the first time since she had woken in this world.

The blast came from behind, hitting Regina square in the back and driving her forward, and her vision darkened even as she fell. She was conscious only of the arms that caught her just before she hit the ground and a voice that she couldn't quite place whispering desperately against her ear.

"What did you do, Regina?"

She wanted to laugh at him, at the concern in his voice, because she had no more answers than he did, or because she had done the only thing she knew how to do anymore. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but there was only darkness.

…

"You didn't have to hurt her."

Robin had always mistrusted the man called Gold, but he had not hated him until now. This man had the nerve to _smirk_ at him, pleased with the part he got to play in all this, while Robin thought of _redness_, couldn't stop thinking of the wet trails of blood that had run from Regina's ears when Gold's magic had struck her down.

"Oh? You wanted me to stand back and watch her destroy the entire town, did you?" Gold regarded the head of his cane thoughtfully, his voice and gaze no less intense, no less menacing, when directed away from Robin himself. "Whatever you think you know about Regina no longer applies: this one's another beast entirely, and you'd do well to remember that."

The warning was meant to bait him, and he jumped at it, one hand dropping to fumble for the short blade tucked under his belt – he knew it would be as useless as a balloon against the Dark One, but he didn't care if he looked a fool if it meant he could wipe the smugness off that man's face. He managed two quick steps before Hook got a solid grip on him and forced him back into the loose circle they had formed.

"Easy, mate. As much as I condone beating the Crocodile to a bloody pulp, he has a point. This Regina is dangerous, as he says, and we may need him."

"Need him to do what?" Robin challenged, noticing how the others shrunk from the question. No one met his eyes except Gold, and the amusement reflected back at him sickened Robin to the point where he had to dig his nails into his palms to keep from flying apart.

Emma shuffled uncomfortably in her place, one arm rising into the air to catch everyone's attention. "Can we just talk about the fact that Regina went full-blown evil with no warning? How the hell did this happen?"

"We don't know," David said at the same time Mary Margaret began, "Well…," and everyone turned to stare at her.

"A memory potion. Or a forgetting potion, I guess." She sighed. "Regina sent me a letter explaining that she was going to erase some of her memories, but I really don't think she meant for this to happen. Something must've gone wrong."

David wrinkled his forehead in confusion. "What did she want to forget badly enough to lobotomize herself?"

Emma's eyes flicked over to Robin, and he felt himself burn with shame. "I think I have a pretty good idea…"

"I think the _why_ can wait until we have a better idea about what to do with her right now," Mary Margaret broke in hurriedly. "If she truly is the Evil Queen again…"

"I don't think there's any question about it, dearie."

Robin looked to where Regina was still half-slumped in the chair they had tied her to. He had never come face-to-face with the Evil Queen during the height of her reign, but he knew the stories well enough, and the woman in front of him was undeniably _dark_, from the severe cut of her dress to the half-snarl she wore even in the grips of unconsciousness. But, gods forgive him, he found her beautiful in her danger, the innermost part of him thinking it cruel to keep such a magnificent animal chained even if her release would bring an end to them all.

"We can't keep her tied to a chair forever. Isn't it enough to strip her of her magic? Must we demean her, as well?"

Emma frowned sympathetically at him. "I know how you feel, Robin, but we need to contain her somehow until…until we know what we're dealing with."

_A monster_ was the unspoken response that circulated the room. Robin could read it clearly in their faces, felt it lodge in his own thoughts as much as he tried to suppress it. None of them wanted to see Regina as one, but there was too much history, too much knowledge, in the room to disregard the epithet altogether.

_A monster_. His gut contracted sharply as he was reminded of Marian's own accusation, how he had chastised her then, and now…

Regina hadn't killed anyone – terrorized a fair few, sent a handful to the hospital with minor injuries, caused more property damage than a season's worth of tornadoes – but she hadn't killed anyone during her rampage on Main Street. Robin clung to that information, but he couldn't ignore the slippery word knocking about his head: _yet_.

…

Regina woke slowly, just lucid enough to know to keep her eyes shut and gather herself before alerting her captors to her consciousness. She was bound – though loosely, it seemed – to a chair that dug uncomfortably into her back. Her neck felt sticky, and she must have bitten herself somewhere, as her mouth was awash with the taste of blood. She could hear the murmuring of voices not far from her, and she strained to listen, to discover who was holding her.

The first voice belonged to the one who had caught her, the accent teasing her again with a sense of familiarity that she simply couldn't explain. He sounded angry and almost protective of her, and though she was uncertain why any stranger would take her side after what she had done to his town, she tucked that knowledge away for later use. _Her defender_. She liked the sound of that. She liked the idea of manipulating him even more.

Rumplestiltskin spoke, and she shuddered with a mixture of excitement and dread. She was_right_; the Imp had some stake in her current predicament. Although it was never pleasant to be on the wrong side of his power, she at least knew what to expect from him, a fragment of predictability in this world where she understood nothing.

She dismissed Hook quickly. His presence was puzzling, perhaps, but the pirate was not a particularly fearsome enemy, if he was to be her enemy.

The next speaker – female, young, immediately irksome – was likewise gauged as non-threatening and dismissed.

But she hadn't been prepared for Charming and Snow to chime in, speaking at the same time as if they wanted to prove once again that they shared a single heart, a single mind. _A single, simple mind._ Their words were lost as Regina dug her fingers into the wood underneath her, black rage building into a headache that pulsed at the base of her neck. Oh, how she wanted to _hurt_ them.

She drew on her magic suddenly, needing to ready herself to face them with all of the strength she possessed, but instead of feeling the rush of heat and energy she was accustomed to, there was nothing.

The shock of not being able to use her magic – not being able to even _feel_ it – was enough to make Regina snap her eyes open. She raised her head slightly, still wanting to avoid the notice of the others, and her eyes trailed over the ugly leather cuff that had been fastened around one of her wrists.

The mere sight of it made her feel ill, and all of the nerve endings in her spine stood on end, ringing with a half-formed pain that was not real but nonetheless forced her eyes to water, her teeth to clamp together in response to its sharpened edge.

She didn't understand what was happening to her, and she couldn't stop the soft, whimpery sound that pushed through her lips before she could bite it back.

It was hardly a whisper, but it was enough to interrupt the conversation going on in front of her. Suddenly Snow, shadowed by Charming, was taking a hesitant step forward and saying, "Regina?"

Anger and pain battled for control of her body, but it only took a moment for anger to win out, as it always did, and Regina hardened her eyes and her mouth before sitting fully upright, determined to look every inch the queen even if she was in chains.

The Snow standing in front of her was unrecognizable to the point of ridiculousness: older and rounder than Regina had ever seen her, with her hair cut as short as a boy's and no trace of royalty in the way she held herself or in the way she…_dressed_, if one could even use that word.

Regina's mask almost slipped as she took in Snow's appearance, though she was relieved to see that whatever magic had brought her here had not left the others untouched. Her gaze wandered over them, picking out details that she might be able to use to her advantage.

Rumplestiltskin wore a human face, but he emitted his usual aura of malice and self-interest that never failed to make her shiver. If she was not mistaken, the pirate hadn't changed his clothes since the last time she had seen him, though something in his expression had softened, and she didn't miss the way he placed himself warily at the side of the young blonde woman. The blonde…she triggered an instinctual feeling of contempt and disappointment, though Regina couldn't recall ever meeting her before.

And, there, lurking at the back with his eyes fixed firmly on the ground and everything in his body clenched as tight as a fist, was her defender. The man refused to look at her, to acknowledge her in any way, and Regina made a frustrated noise in her throat as she was unable to read anything more from him. He was a vague portrait of _green_ and _hunter_ and the lingering sense that she should _know_ him, though she couldn't see how.

Snow and Charming were still regarding her curiously, a stupid look of concern on Snow's face that made it easy to toy with her.

Regina glanced casually at the chains encircling her, careful to bypass the cuff that had caused such an excruciating reaction before, and raised an eyebrow. "Bondage, Snow?" She focused her attention on Charming as the girl's cheeks colored. "Perhaps you should ask your wife what other secrets she's keeping."

"I wish we didn't have to keep you restrained, Regina, but it's for your own good. And ours," Snow amended quickly. "You're not yourself right now."

"I'm not myself? You stand there looking like a, a common _wet nurse_, and _I'm_ not myself? Please, enlighten me. Better yet, tell me why you brought me here, and how."

An uneasy silence filled the room until Charming said, "We didn't bring you here. You did."

She frowned at him. He seemed certain of his statement, they all did, but she was lost until Rumplestiltskin lifted his chin slightly, giving her an almost imperceptible nod.

"The curse?" she asked incredulously.

The group's quick exchange of glances confirmed everything, but Regina refused to believe that years of planning and toil, years of _sacrifice_, had given her only _this_.

"The curse is supposed to give me my happy ending, and, regrettably, being tied up and put on display for the likes of you is not quite what I had imagined."

Her tone was sarcastic, but she was trembling with another surge of anger and sickness as she reached for magic that no longer existed, setting fire to her nerves once again as she pulled against the cuff.

"Well, technically, this is Mary Margaret's curse – " Hook yelped as the blonde elbowed him sharply in the ribs. "What, Swan? It _is_."

Snow took another step forward, gentling her approach as if she were drawing near a skittish, wounded creature, and Regina hated her for it.

"You did enact the curse. We spent 28 years living out what you thought was your happy ending before Emma found us." The blonde raised one hand to give an embarrassed little wave. "She broke the curse, but we decided to stay in this land and build real lives here – lives that you're a part of."

"Your daughter?" Regina asked, eyeing the woman who should have been born, at most, a few days ago in a land far from here. "The baby you put in the wardrobe?"

Details came spilling out then, all of it impossible – Saviors and portals between worlds and a second curse and witches with green skin – and she wondered how they could think her foolish enough to believe them. They used to fear her; now they mocked her.

Emma searched through her pockets and pulled out a much-creased piece of paper, breaking away from the pirate to hold it out to Regina, muttering, "Here. Take it."

It was a picture better than any painting. It was _real _somehow, despite being confined to paper, as if the boy it showed was standing right in front of her. A smiling boy and, hugging him from behind, _her_ – this new her, the one with shorter hair and distastefully conservative clothing – looking impossibly happy.

They told her that the boy was hers, and she laughed in their faces.

Laughed so hard and so long that she ran out of air and choked helplessly on her mirth until her lungs worked again. The idea that she had a child was ridiculous enough; the claim that she shared a son with another _woman_, the daughter of the girl she had spent a lifetime trying to bring down, was pure madness.

She studied the picture again, attempting to find anything recognizable in those people, before she crumpled it in her fist, destroying it as thoroughly as she could with her wrists bound.

"This means nothing."

Everyone's faces (except Rumpelstiltskin's, which remained unreadable) filled with dismay, heartbreak, and Regina felt a flicker of triumph: she had hurt them, though she didn't understand how. They peeled away from her in pairs, defeated for the moment. Her defender hung at the back of the group and, before slipping out of the room and leaving her in solitude, lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes.

_Blue_, she thought, _steady and rough at the same time, like a river. _And he was gone.

…

They left David to watch over Regina – from afar, as no one wanted to be within range of her barbed tongue – as they regrouped. It was hard to pretend that their first talk with this version of the Evil Queen had been anything but disastrous.

"You said you found this in her vault?" Gold asked Mary Margaret, holding up a small flask.

"I think it might be what she used. It was on the floor when I got there, and nothing else looked disturbed."

Gold nodded, passing the flask under his nose and saying, "Lethe's Waters. I taught her this one myself – a relatively simple but effective forgetting potion, highly adaptable to the maker's desires." His mouth twisted into a sneer. "Unfortunately for us all, Regina was never the most careful of students. Too much moonberry, if the smell is any indication."

"Never mind what's in it, how can we reverse it?" Emma asked.

"Only the maker of the potion can reverse its effects. If Regina decides that she'd rather live with her memories, painful though they may be, then and only then will they be restored."

"But…if Regina doesn't remember drinking the potion, and she doesn't remember who – what – she wanted to forget, how can she choose to take it back?"

Gold shrugged, his eyes alight with something like glee. "Therein lies the difficulty, Miss Swan."

Emma groaned in frustration, and Mary Margaret put a calming hand on her back. "I learned a long time ago not to underestimate Regina and the strength of her will. We'll figure it out."

"I need to find a way to tell Henry."

"I'll come with you."

Emma and Mary Margaret began to leave, Hook following on their heels, pausing only to shoot a questioning glance back at Robin. He waved them on, determined not to leave Regina and Gold in the same building without providing as much interference as possible.

Gold regarded him for a long moment, head cocked to the side as he scrutinized every inch of Robin.

Finally he spoke, his voice almost seductive in the way it caressed each word, a note of anticipation tied into each one. "There may be other ways to…unlock her memories."

"How?"

"There are things that run deeper than memory, boy." Gold looked at him with contempt, disappointed, perhaps, that Robin had no appreciation for the subtleties of his art. "Light magic, love for her child, meaningful connections with Mary Margaret and Miss Swan and even you. Memory spells don't change the substance of a person, just the _memories_. Regina may not remember that she has all of these things, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. And if she finds them again, well…"

"Then there's hope?"

Gold smiled cryptically and disappeared before Robin could blink. There was no cloud of smoke, no fanfare or flourish of hands, just a sudden wink into absence that made Robin's heart beat a little faster, like the heart of something suddenly aware it was being hunted.

…

He went to Marian.

They had left her in the mayor's office, as it seemed as safe a place as any, but he was not so heartless as to leave her there alone. His men watched over her in shifts, and he dismissed John now with a wave of his hand, entering the room that housed his wife but reminded him so powerfully of Regina.

Roland had stopped asking about Marian after a day or two, and though it was understandable for him not to miss the mother he had barely begun to know, Robin felt that he had been a poor father as well as a poor husband. Why would Roland occupy himself with the fate of his mother when Robin himself couldn't be troubled to visit her more than a few times?

Marian remained unchanged, beautiful even under the blue layers of ice, and he traced a finger over her hair and down the length of her arm as he sat on the floor beside her.

He wasn't sure how it had happened, but he had made a habit of bouncing between Marian and Regina, seeking comfort in the arms of one when the other had been taken from him. And now they had both been taken, and he was left with nothing. A punishment for his selfishness, for trying to keep them both, and a fitting one at that.

Regina…

No, he wouldn't think of her here, not while he was beside Marian and tasked with finding a way to love her again. He _did_ love her, and that was part of the problem. He didn't know how to make his heart whole again, how to keep from loving both women at once, though he had been left with little choice.

He pressed his lips to Marian's hand, to her throat, to her cheek, and at last to her lips.

The ice was slick under his skin, as ice tended to be, and as he half-collapsed over her body, he could pretend that the wetness he felt on his face was traces of meltwater and not tears.

"If you have any answers, Marian, _please_…" he begged through gritted teeth, but she remained silent and cold and unyielding under his touch.

* * *

><p>This will be a three-parter. Would love to hear your thoughts!<p> 


	2. Part II

This was a beast of a chapter to write, even after I moved some of the action to the next (last) part of the story. Thank you for your patience! I really wanted to get at least one update out before I stepped away for the holidays, especially after what's happened in the last few episodes.

If you notice anything inconsistent with canon, I freely admit to changing some details (like the location of Regina's apple tree) for my own purposes. Or I might just have a terrible memory.

* * *

><p>Emma watched him from the doorway, seconds sliding into minutes as she braced herself to deliver the news and became increasingly reluctant to wrench Henry away from his lazy afternoon of comic books and math problems.<p>

"Okay, it's getting creepy now. Like, Hallmark-commercial levels of creepy, Mom. Can you just come in already?"

Henry's voice was the perfect combination of annoyance and amusement, something he had undoubtedly picked up from Regina over the years and felt the need to remind her of right now, as if the task at hand wasn't difficult enough.

"Sorry, kid." Emma managed a sheepish smile before wrinkling her nose in disgust. "_Hallmark_? That bad?"

Henry nodded. "What's up?"

She settled on the bed next to him, gently flipping the comic book under his nose (another thing he shared with Regina, never her) closed, an action that finally made Henry turn and look at her properly, a small frown pulling down one side of his mouth.

"Listen, Henry, there's no good way to tell you this, so…" Emma sighed, then rushed through the rest of the words. "Your mom kind of became the Evil Queen again."

He looked at her, a furrow of confusion pulling his eyebrows together, before letting out a short, snorting laugh. "Yeah, okay. Are you talking about the whole Robin and Marian thing? Because I know – "

"No! Well, not exactly. Your mom wanted to forget everything that happened with Robin, so she used a memory potion. Only it erased a little more than she had planned." A beat, as she weighed the difference between honesty and kindness. "A lot more."

"Like what?"

"Uh, pretty much everything since she cast the curse that brought everyone to Storybrooke."

Henry scrunched his face as he pieced it all together. "So, she doesn't remember me?"

"No, kid. She doesn't know who I am either, and she's got a serious vendetta against your grandma and grandpa again. She tore up half the town today before we realized what was happening."

"Did she hurt anyone?"

"No, she didn't hurt anyone...not _badly_, at least." Emma cringed as she said it, squeezing Henry's shoulder in a one-arm, lopsided hug. "I'm so sorry, kid."

He just shook his head a little, looking thoughtful and somehow completely unfazed by the whole situation. She supposed he had seen enough magic-gone-wrong at this point to consider his mother's return to villainy a relatively minor development.

"You're not going to let me see her, are you?"

"I _really_ don't think it's a good idea right now."

"I get it. Mom wouldn't want me to get close to her like that either – you know, not when she's all scary-faced and ripping people's hearts out."

"Hey, she's not ripping anyone's heart out, okay?"

Henry continued as if he hadn't heard her. "It's gonna make Operation Elephant a little harder to pull off, though."

"Operation what now?"

"Operation _Elephant_. We gotta bring back her memories, right?"

"Right, and…" Emma suppressed the urge to question the operation name – of all things, she never would have picked _elephants_ to represent Regina in any way – because Henry was watching her, impatiently waiting for her to _get_ it while she ran what little she knew about the animal through her mind, finishing with a weak, "…elephants never forget?"

"Bingo."

"I don't know, Henry. Gold made it sound pretty complicated."

"I have an idea."

Of course he had an idea, an operation to fix anything that their fucked-up lives threw at him, and Emma loved his hopefulness, his _belief_, but she knew there would come a time when whatever cleverly-named plan he had in place would fail or backfire or hurt somebody, and she didn't want to see that happen to him, not ever, but especially not when so much was at stake.

"You know how you needed the book to remember that you were the Savior?" She nodded. "I think I can make a book like that for Mom – all the things from Storybrooke she needs to remember, with pictures, and stories, and _everything_."

In his mind, he had already succeeded, and Emma didn't have the heart to discourage him, to warn him that Regina was just as apt to fling the book out of the window as to read it. It would keep him occupied, out-of-the-way, and it was something to try, no matter how far-fetched it seemed to her. A book had worked on her, after all, despite her resistant skepticism.

So she smiled at him fondly and said, "It's a good idea, kid."

Henry had already rocketed off the bed, darting from one corner of the room to another as he started to gather pieces for his book, poring over his collection for just the right issues of _X-Men_ and _S.H.I.E.L.D._, smoothing out pictures of himself with Regina, looking for anything that would bring his mother back to him.

…

Rumplestiltskin magicked them all – Charming, Snow, Hook, the _Savior_, and Regina herself – to another location, a house decorated in black and white and silver in a way that managed to be austere and luxurious at the same time.

_Her_ house, they said, and Snow watched her expectantly as she looked around, eyes moving from one expensive furnishing to the next, as if the girl actually believed that the mere sight of the wallpaper would be enough for Regina to reawaken memories of the life she had supposedly built there.

The aesthetic was not quite to her tastes but acceptable, doubly so considering she had spent the night strapped to that infernal chair, aching in places she couldn't put a name to. She had refused to sleep in such an undignified position, especially while in the hands of people who wished her harm, and had wasted hours glaring at Charming every time he had poked his head in to check on her, then at Hook when he had taken over the watch.

"Careful, love," the pirate had called to her from the edge of the room. "You'll set me afire if you glare any harder."

She had only deepened her scowl. "I'm counting on it, dear."

She was paying for it now, of course, her eyes heavy-lidded with exhaustion, burning as she blinked. And she was still chained to that damned chair. She had to crane her neck in a near-impossible angle to shoot a scathing look at Snow.

"If this how the curse interpreted my sense of style, I can only imagine how hideous _your_ hovel is."

There was a bustle of activity around them – Rumplestiltskin muttering and moving his hands in familiar patterns as he warded the house, the others making a point of removing sharp objects with a sense of gravitas that had Regina all but rolling her eyes. As if she would stoop to attacking any of them with the cutlery.

"It's done." Rumple announced, peevishly tugging at the sleeve of his jacket as if he had been greatly inconvenienced by the spellwork. "I trust you can handle the rest."

He strode out of the house without waiting for a response, the clack of his cane loud against the ground even after the door had slammed shut behind him.

"Right. Well."

Charming glanced around at the others, earning a quick nod of approval from Emma, and bent down to fiddle with the restraints holding Regina in place.

"Letting me go?" she purred. "Now there's a good boy. You'll die quicker than the others."

Charming's jaw tightened as he stepped away, loose chains in hand, and he instinctively flicked his eyes over to Snow. They were still wary of her, powerless as she was – good. Regina stood, somehow keeping her balance and an element of regality despite the prickling sensations that ran through all of her limbs, and turned in a close, controlled circle.

"What's next? A housewarming party?"

"The house is under a containment spell. There's no way for you to leave – not through force, not through magic. Two of us will be staying here at all times to keep an eye on you."

"Just for a little while. Just until we're sure…" Snow broke in softly, apologetically. "It's to protect you as much as it is to protect us."

"Like I need your protection," Regina spat back at her.

But it was an effort to keep the venom in her voice, and she no longer had the energy to fight, not now, when she was bone-tired and overwhelmed and surrounded by enemies who looked at her with fear but also with something like _pity_. Better to retreat and regain her footing, to strike at them later when she knew what weapons she had left in her arsenal.

"I suppose you know where I kept quarters here," she said drily, "us being such good _friends_ and all."

"Upstairs. I'll show you."

"Don't bother, Swan. It takes a special kind of feeblemindedness to get lost in a hallway, don't you think?"

She swept up the stairs before any of them could open their mouths again, passing two doorways before she found the master bedroom. Black and white, predictably, and full of fine fabrics and sleek corners, though a thorough inspection would have to wait until later.

She all but fell into the bed, boots and all, not even thinking to warm herself under the covers but only curling into a small, clenched shape and breathing in the strange air of this world, of her beautifully composed cage.

…

She woke with sunlight streaming over her head, cold and stiff and sprawled across a bed much too large for one person. Her makeup had left dark streaks on the fabric under her cheek, some of it looking more like blood than lipstick, and she sighed, knowing that she should clean herself up before any of her jailers found her in such a state of disarray, of _weakness_.

They hadn't sought to disturb her yet, surely, or Snow and her bleeding heart would have covered her with a blanket or left her water and bread, or whatever table scraps they expected her to eat here.

She turned over, flopping bonelessly before drawing her knees closer to her chest again, and let her eyes wander across the surfaces of the room. Her vision snagged on the bedside table, on the picture of the boy (Henry, they had called him, and it was a sick joke to use her father's name against her like that) staring down at her, and she was forced back to pondering the truth of every impossible thing they had told her yesterday.

It _was_ impossible, all of it, and yet Regina had believed before in things that others would claim as fiction, as invention, and she couldn't deny that every piece of this world she had been exposed to thus far – every person, every room, every beguiling object – was steeped with an odd familiarity, a frustratingly tip-of-the-tongue sensation that kept answers just out of her reach, though she could _feel_ them there.

Her body recognized this place – deep in its core, in its muscles – even if her mind did not.

More troubling was the idea that this world and her current state were self-inflicted, that she had been the instrument for the magic that had brought her (and all of them) to this point, if not the mastermind behind it all – that title had and always would belong to Rumplestiltskin alone.

The level of magic, the depth and coordination it required, was obviously beyond the capabilities of the two idiots, and as much as she wanted to pin this latest manipulation on the Imp, she knew that any worlds he created would be dark, twisted things and not full of sunlight and pretty houses and sons.

But if she had done this to herself, willingly rendered herself helpless and in the keeping of people she had always considered enemies, what had she gotten in exchange?

What had been so terrible that she had gone to such lengths to erase it from her mind?

…

She stubbornly wore the clothes she had fashioned for herself for two days before she felt unkempt and pathetic enough to confront the closet in her room. She had rummaged through it on the first morning, driven then by curiosity and not need, and had been bewildered by its contents, briefly running her fingers over the line of fabrics before it all felt too intrusive, this thumbing-through of a stranger's clothing, though she knew that everything she found would be perfectly tailored to her body.

The second inspection proved no less mystifying. Nothing was as monstrous as the over-large sweaters Snow seemed to favor in this land, but she was less than pleased with the selection and skeptical that any version of herself would choose to dress like this. Not unattractive, exactly, but so…sensible. _Common_. Some of the pieces were downright mannish, words like _jeans_ and _pantsuits _(both immediately distasteful) presenting themselves as she looked, everything loose and long and buttoned-up where she normally bared skin.

Even the dresses that appealed to her – striking colors, dramatic necklines – were strange in shape and cut, and, more than anything, the foreignness of the collection left her uneasy, wondering who she was supposed to be in this place. Who she had been, if the others were to be believed.

She had little choice, though, and in the end she pulled together an outfit almost at random, soft trousers and a simple shirt in greys and blacks, everything comfortable but formal and fitted enough to command attention if she needed to. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders, and she studied her reflection in the mirror, noting how easily she had become the woman in the pictures that she had found scattered throughout the house: no longer a queen, but Regina – _just_ Regina, as everyone insisted on addressing her, the name spoken in varying tones of wariness or exasperation as each conversation they attempted to start was met by her sullen silence or snarling contempt.

She felt no different, but the transformation was enough to make Emma do a double-take in the doorway, one hand hanging halfway through the motion as she forgot to knock.

"Whoa. You look like…you."

Regina scowled, absentmindedly tugging at the cuff on her wrist. It no longer made her feel ill, but she despised the sight of it, its constant reminder of how much had been taken from her, and she wished she had chosen something with longer sleeves.

"What, did you come to invite me to your little tea party downstairs?" she snapped as the blonde continued to stare at her, slack-mouthed.

Emma, undoubtedly, had come to remind her (for what felt like the thousandth time) that she had free rein of the house and didn't need to keep to her room. They always sent Swan, as if they expected her to find the woman's presence less grating than the others because they had no shared history. Regina enjoyed making them come to her, their hesitancy as they approached her chosen quarters, so clearly at a loss for what to do with her.

Emma didn't bother with the reminder this time, finally gathering herself and turning away with a childish "Whatever."

Regina took up her customary place at the window. It suited her to play the captive once again – it was a role she had fulfilled for much of her life, after all – falling back into her old fantasies of escape and freedom (now rather more firmly edged with ideas of vengeance that settled in the pits of her being, invasive as any hunger) as she watched shadows lengthening, birds flitting through the sky, and the comings and goings of the household below.

As promised, there were always two people in the house with her, and she had learned to identify them by sound alone – the weight of their steps, the hum of their voices through layers of wood and carpeting. Charming, his daughter, and Hook appeared the most frequently in various combinations, but her house had become some sort of meeting place for the town, and there were often four or five people drifting through the downstairs level at any given time.

The man with blue eyes, the hunter, her defender, came regularly but never stayed, never even set foot inside the house as far as she could tell. She watched him (watched _for_ him, though she would never admit it) trudge up to the door, always with a bow slung across his back, always clothed in shades of green and brown as if he carried the whole forest with him. She could almost smell the pine and campfire on his skin despite the glass that separated them.

She heard the deep rumble of his voice beneath her, unintelligible but distinctly accented, trading words with whoever answered the door for a few minutes before he went away again, straight-backed and sure and inscrutable.

Though she never learned what news he brought, odd snatches of conversation had a habit of traveling up through the walls, and she wondered if they knew how much she overheard.

Most of it was boring (Swan and Hook commenting on the unseasonably cold weather) or inane (Snow and Charming's endless exchange of endearments), but sometimes she caught pieces of information that proved far more intriguing.

"We have to acknowledge the possibility that Regina might not be the biggest threat we're facing right now," Emma said one afternoon, shortly after she had arrived red-cheeked and out of breath.

The sound of shushing, and a much quieter question from Snow that Regina had to strain to hear even though she had moved to the top of the staircase to eavesdrop. "Do you think she would help us?"

There was no answer.

They were distracted by something – something more dangerous than her, as unlikely as that seemed – and Regina knew then that she could use any lapse in their concentration to bring them back under her heel. She had accepted their chains passively thus far, and she could already see them becoming complacent, careless. It would only take one slip for her to find a way out.

She told herself that she was waiting for the right moment, reluctant to act only because she was still so unprepared, but there was a curiosity she couldn't quite push down, a desperate need to make sense of this place and the woman they thought she was that overwhelmed her impulse to escape and destroy. She studied every picture and every nook in the house, running her fingers over them as if they would open their secrets to her if she touched them just so. She fed on details, on names, on faces. She listened.

And that was how she finally learned the hunter's name: Robin Hood.

She knew the stories, of course, and had seen the wanted posters that bore his name and face tacked alongside her own images of Snow. He had been beneath her notice then – as if she would waste breath pursuing a common _thief_ when her true prey was still running loose – and yet _something_ seemed to have stuck, for him to keep surfacing in her thoughts, for her to keep counting his visits to the door and the minutes he spent before straying out of her reach again.

Every description of him that she remembered (laughing eyes and a disregard for authority and an unerring bow arm) seemed so unlike the man she watched through the window.

He was so _sad_, that man. It hung about him like a sickness, and even the straight line of his back could not hide the depth of the hurt he carried within him.

He was one more thing she wanted desperately to understand. To use him, she told herself, as she imagined his heart in her hand and her teeth at his throat. Only to use him.

The outlaw.

…

The peace was broken before the week was out, after the days had begun to run together and her boredom and restlessness had grown stifling enough to drive her downstairs.

Hook and Swan looked up at her with wide eyes, not bothering to conceal their surprise or their unease and quickly inching apart from each other on the sofa they shared.

"Regina, what – "

"Don't let me interrupt your…whatever-it-is that you're doing." She smirked knowingly as she passed them, delighting in the embarrassed flush that colored both their cheeks like two teenagers caught doing something their parents would disapprove of.

She strode into the kitchen and regretted that she had come downstairs without any particular goal. She couldn't retreat this quickly, at least not empty-handed, so she settled for filling a glass with water she had little interest in drinking. It still unnerved her that she knew which cupboard housed the glassware without checking.

She stood at the sink, eyes wandering over the spotless countertops and to the window that looked out into the yard, and then the glass she had forgotten she was holding was shattering on the floor because she had seen something impossible, something that made her heart jump into her throat and pulse frantically there.

Her tree, _her_ apple tree, was rooted just outside, and the maddening possibility that it was real was outweighed only by her absolute confidence that no one would have thought to bring it here but her.

Three involuntary steps across the kitchen and her hand already closing on the doorknob when someone seized her from behind, one strong arm locking around her chest and a hook catching low in her belly as she struggled forward.

"Are you mad?" the pirate hissed against her ear, sounding more panicked than angry. "I wouldn't be surprised if Gold rigged the enchantment on this house to _kill_ you if you tried to escape."

She didn't care what he said, barely understood the words as she thrashed in his hold and clawed at the arms that held her pinned, no physical match for him but savage in her anger, in her intent. She finally landed an elbow in his side, and they broke apart, both heaving and wild-eyed. He was between her and the door, and she knew what it was, to be trapped like an animal, to be left in that feral space where human understanding was forsaken in favor of instinct. All she saw was metal and leather and glass – things that could be sundered by the force of her need to know that what she was seeing was real.

"What the hell is going on?" Emma demanded from behind them.

The electricity was leaking from Regina's body, the possibility of reaching the tree slipping away as control returned. She had destroyed entire villages in similar outbursts of emotion – now she couldn't even break down a door.

"What happened?" Emma asked again, softer this time, and it was too much, that disingenuous _care_ in her tone, for Regina to stomach.

"That's _my_ tree, and I don't know how it got here, but you have no right to keep me from it," she growled, her voice rising with and punctuating each word, her teeth bared.

"Yeah, well, even if we wanted to let you out, the containment spell would stop you – and probably incinerate you, so…" The blonde shrugged, not unsympathetically, and Regina felt herself tense again at the diplomacy in Emma's words. She was still dangerously close to the edge, and, from the look Hook and Emma exchanged over her head, they all knew it.

"You can't keep me in here forever."

She meant it as a threat, but her voice trembled with something other than fury, and it sounded more like begging, like a frightened girl who had been locked in the darkness for too long.

…

Twenty-two steps along the path to the front door, twenty-two steps back to the street.

Robin had them memorized.

It had been agreed that he shouldn't have any contact with Regina, everyone reaching the sort of mutual conclusion that didn't need to be said aloud, and he was spared the torture of sharing such an intimate space with her, of pretending they were nothing more than acquaintances. The others still depended on him for patrols and updates on the Snow Queen's movements, and so he made the trek to Regina's house more often than he would have liked, always stopping on the front porch as he relayed his news as if daring to step into the place where she slept and breathed and paced would ruin him. It probably would.

In the seconds before the door swung open upon his knock, he held his breath, always expecting that, this time, it would be her on the other side. Waiting for him with that smile that made him feel like a boy again, unsteady and eager as he reached for her hand and asked to come in.

It was Mary Margaret, or Emma, or David, and he forced a tight smile of his own as they waded into small-talk that was painfully uninteresting for all of them. He never asked about Regina, couldn't bear to, but they all had their ways of slipping updates of their own into the conversation.

"She started dressing normally again."

"She found some of Henry's old artwork and stared at it for hours."

"She threw the coffeepot at my head this morning. But her heart wasn't really in it."

"Oh," he would nod, focusing on his boots instead of the gentle understanding in their faces. He didn't want kindness from anyone. He didn't deserve it.

Twenty-two steps there and back, and he was never sure which was worse: drawing close enough to feel her presence, like a physical weight, in his chest or walking away again.

Sometimes, deep in the night while Roland muttered in his sleep beside him, he would stare down at the ink on his wrist, the tattoo that he had gotten on a stupid, vain whim that had somehow become tied to his fate, his choices, his happiness.

He could show her the tattoo. He could force her to recognize who he was to her, and maybe it would break the spell or maybe it would break her mind, but it would do _something_, of that he was certain.

But Regina had made her choice, and she wouldn't thank him for taking that away from her. He told himself that it was better this way, more honorable – how he had come to detest that word – to let her start afresh and build a life with someone who wasn't burdened with a past like his.

He had Marian and his son and a good life with his men, and that was enough, _more_ than enough to be thankful for. He knew that. In time, maybe, he would be able to accept that version of the truth without his head traitorously reminding him that he loved another.

Regina was fine, she was _whole_ without him, while he was breaking apart – damned by the promise of his tattoo, damned by his own reckless heart, damned for wanting her, wanting everything she was, beyond the bounds of reason.

…

The walls of the castle suddenly dropped away, and Regina pushed through the dense undergrowth that pressed closely around her. She didn't know where she was, but one forest tended to resemble another even across worlds, and she felt strangely at peace, unconcerned by this inexplicable transition between tower and nature. Her eyes closed as she tried to engage her other senses, a draft stirring up the smell of damp soil and something muskier nearby.

It was soaking through the bottoms of her shoes, then: the field of blood she was standing in. It mixed with the dirt and the short stems of grass and fern underfoot, the colors unnaturally rich and terrible and beautiful at once, and a scream rose in her throat as she backed away, tracking wine-red mud with her, but there was no outrunning the storm of half-formed images that played in front of her eyes, under her eyelids – purple magic spilling out of a well, a little boy laughing as he chased after a flock of geese, her mother on the floor, her mother _dying_, someone gently and hesitantly pressing her heart back into her chest, apples, blood, and no telling which was which – and Regina gasped back to wakefulness, shuddering as the blankets fell away from her.

She was cold, shaken, and though the images had already faded to muddled impressions of color and shadow, they felt intensely real, alive under her skin in the stuttering, hammering skip of her pulse.

Her door banged open without warning, and a panting Emma stood braced against the frame, looking half-asleep herself. "You screamed."

Regina smoothed the blanket over her lap, trying to calm her hands. "I did not."

"Uh…okay. I must have imagined it then. My mistake." The response was steeped in sarcasm and disbelief, and Emma's face was creased with a troubled frown as she began to pull the door closed again.

"Wait."

Emma paused, raising an eyebrow at her.

"If this _is_ my house, I must have a stock of spirits somewhere."

It was a concession that she was loath to give, this admission of need, but she wouldn't sleep again tonight, and the tranquilizing effects of a stiff drink were worth braving the company and scrutiny of a woman she barely knew.

Emma's face had relaxed into a crooked smile. She was amused about something, but not mocking, and her voice was light when she asked, "How'd you like a glass of the best apple cider you've ever tasted?"

"Something stronger, I think."

Emma's face paled a little then, as if Regina had said the wrong thing, but she nodded and jerked her head towards the stairs before walking away, letting Regina follow in her own time.

When she made it down to the sitting room, Emma had already procured a large decanter of something – whiskey, she guessed by the color – and poured generous amounts into three tumblers.

Hook watched her through half-lidded eyes (and, gods, he insisted on lining his eyes with kohl even while he slept) as she took a glass from Emma and knocked it back in two long swallows.

"Oh, good, you're here. Scream like that, one expects to find you being murdered in your bed, and it's not like you have a shortage of people willing to do the job."

Regina briefly contemplated throwing her glass at him – a pretty face like his was _asking_ for a few more scars – but she settled for a venomous look as she poured herself another drink, this one to be sipped more slowly.

"Keep your mutt on a leash, Swan, unless you want to see his heart extinguished in front of you."

"Forgive me if I don't feel more threatened, Regina. What are you gonna do, dig it out with a spoon?"

"Would you like to – "

"All right, all right," Emma broke in, stepping into the rapidly shrinking distance between Regina and the pirate. "Can we all just sit down and have a drink? It's been a long few days for all of us."

"Aye, love, that it has been," Hook sighed resignedly, and the amorous way those two looked at each other made Regina want to gag. "I'll try to behave."

They sat in a loose circle, each sipping at their whiskey in silence, and Regina had finally begun to relax in their presence, letting her mind wander lazily, when Emma interrupted her.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"With _you_? Are we going to hold hands and braid each other's hair, too?"

Hook choked on a mouthful of whiskey, spluttering through his laughter and earning a disapproving glare from Emma as she muttered, "I think you're confusing me with my mother."

"Well, Swan, the apple never falls far from the tree," Regina replied sweetly. "What kind of ridiculous name is _Swan_, anyway?"

"Let's see, the name you cursed me with when you poofed everyone into this world?"

"It was your parents who put you in that wardrobe, not me. I just wanted to kill you."

"That makes me feel so much better," Emma mumbled back. "You could call me Emma, you know. You used to."

Regina pointed to Hook, who had been watching the exchange with poorly concealed amusement. "He calls you Swan."

Emma fixed him with a look that clearly said _this is all your fault_, and Regina couldn't resist needling the blonde even more – her temper pricked easily, and it gave Regina some small measure of control, one of her few powers that didn't depend on magic. "Perhaps you would prefer 'love'?"

"Why do I even bother?" Emma asked sulkily, draining her glass with a speed and ease that marked her as an experienced drinker. Not quite like her mother then, no.

They lapsed again into silence. It wasn't comfortable, but it was somehow less awkward, less threatening, than she had expected. The nightmares that had driven her downstairs in the first place were held at bay – still lingering at the back of her mind, and she would have to confront what she had seen (remembered?) sooner or later – but for now she was content to sit and drink, even if she had to share the space with Hook and Swan.

"So, we've been talking. Not just us, but Mary Margaret, and David, and – "

"Yes, dear, I do know the names of the people who have imprisoned me in my house."

"We think you should have some time to go outside. See the town, you know, and maybe that will help you remember. You won't be alone, of course, but there are worse things, right?"

Regina glowered at the blonde. "I'm not a dog. You don't need to walk me."

"Do you want to leave the house or not?"

"Fine."

The required supervision would likely chafe just as much as a physical leash, but it was something. A small victory that thrilled up her spine before settling back in her stomach as nerves, as if her body was trying to warn her that she wasn't going to like what she found.

…

Perhaps it was the anticipation of being able to leave the house or her anxiety about the nightmares returning, but sleep eluded her for the second night in a row. The sky was just beginning to quicken with the greys and pinks of dawn when she pushed the covers back and stole into the darkened hallway in search of something to occupy her hands and mind.

The downstairs was dimly lit by two lamps, but no one was in sight – unusual for Charming, who had been there only hours before and made a point of sitting up all night when he was on duty. There was a stillness, an emptiness, to the house, and Regina couldn't help wondering if they had finally left her alone, as unlikely as that was.

That mad flicker of hope drew her towards the kitchen once again. The light from the other room barely touched the shadows in there, and the world outside was just as dark, lost to the night in those last moments before the break of day that seemed to stretch into an eternity. She could not see it, but it was there: her tree, such a silly thing to hold such meaning for her, but there it was, on the other side of the glass, and if she could only feel its living strength under her hands…

Her steps quickened over the tiles, a sudden delirious impulse driving her forward as she realized there was no one to stop her this time. She didn't care about the magic locking her in, she didn't care if the Imp's spell ripped her apart – anything would be better than staying within these walls for another minute, and she would welcome death, she would welcome _freedom _in whatever sick form she could find it – and so caught up in her flight to the door as she was, she would have missed the man leaning against the kitchen island if he had not turned his head to watch her, the subtle movement stopping her short as if she had been grounded in quicksand, and they stared at each other.

Robin Hood looked just as taken aback by her presence as she was by his. There was a steaming mug poised halfway between the counter and his lips, its motion disrupted or perhaps forgotten because of her intrusion. Regina's eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness to make out the broad features of his face, and she was surprised – pleased – to see that there was no evasion this time, simply a steady return of her gaze as they regarded each other with equal curiosity.

In seconds Robin had broken the pause by bringing the mug to his lips again, drinking deeply, and returning it to the counter with a calmness that she would not have expected from a man whose solitude had been so unceremoniously interrupted.

"M'lady," he said, with a slight dip of his head.

"At last, someone addressing me with the respect I deserve." She bared her teeth in something that fell between a smile and a sneer. It wasn't _your majesty _or anything resembling proper etiquette, but it was more than _Regina, _and this man was proving far more interesting than she could have imagined. "Astonishing that it should come from the lips of a thief."

"You know who I am, then?"

"I've heard the stories."

"Is that an accusation?" His tone was light, wry, and he cupped his hands around his drink, stroking the sides with distracted fingers. "I assure you, the silver is safe from me, should you care to count it."

She closed the distance between them, circling slowly around the centered island, and he turned with her, never dropping his eyes from her face and, more tellingly, never letting her get behind his back. For all his posturing, his casual words and gestures, he did not trust her for a second.

"Why did you come here if not to steal from me?"

"The others needed to leave early, and I was close." He shrugged slightly. "They lured me in with the promise of good coffee – which, if you have tasted the dreck my men make, is rather too much too resist."

Without asking, he reached for a second mug and the coffeepot (one of the few things that seemed out-of-place in the kitchen, presumably because she had broken the first one against the wall with a mistimed throw at Charming's head, and he had replaced it with no regard for style or color) and slid it gently across the counter to her. She took it – merely to stave off the chill that was working its way through her thin nightclothes, of course, though the warmth and spice of the liquid was comforting in other ways as well.

"You've never come inside before. Are you afraid of the Evil Queen?"

His eyes narrowed a little, creating a deep furrow in his brow as he cocked his head. "Is that who you are?"

She couldn't read him then, whether he was serious or amused, and so she settled for a stiff "That's what they call me."

"And they call me a thief with honor, but that doesn't make it so."

His easy dismissal of the identity she had worn for years stirred her temper, and she set her mug down (nearly cracking the bottom) almost as sharply as she spoke. "People fear me for good reason, thief. I've slaughtered peasants and burned villages to dust and, apparently, cursed an entire land. I won't begrudge them their petty titles."

"I've heard the stories," he said, the echo of her earlier words infuriating in its insolence. "But I was not slaughtered or burned or cursed by your hand, and so stories they will remain." He saw that Regina was about to protest and pressed on. "I prefer to make my own judgments, m'lady, and I see little that can be called 'evil' in the woman standing in front of me."

"Then you are a fool."

"Perhaps I am, but I stand by my word. Whether you accept it is another matter entirely."

"You speak as if you know me."

Robin paused, perhaps weighing his answer on his tongue, and finally flicked his eyes away from her. "You remind me of someone I used to know."

"Oh?"

She waited for him to elaborate, sure that he was speaking of someone he had loved, someone now dead, someone she sensed she could use against him. But he did not speak or raise his head, and she was left to watch him as the sun rose, the changing colors of the sky illuminating his frame an inch at a time as the world gradually lightened.

For the first time, Regina could see the deep lines of his face – deeper than any man his age had a right to wear – and the protective hunch of his shoulders and the way his hands were bruised, yellowing trails along the outsides of his pinkies and down the blades of his hands, reaching almost to his wrists. It was strange, she thought, for an archer to be so careless with himself.

"Were you planning on going somewhere?" Robin tipped his head towards the door, and there was a flippancy in the question that angered her again as she was pulled away from her assessment of him. He knew very well that there was nowhere for her to go.

"That is none of your concern."

"The tree, it means something to you?"

He looked at her knowingly, and there was nothing for her to deny, for he had witnessed her desperation to reach it not an hour ago.

"It's _mine_," she growled, and that should be enough, but she couldn't stop talking. "It's the only thing I have left, and I don't even know if it's real." For all her anger, her voice caught on the last word, and Robin's hand twitched away from its hold on his mug, feeling for her across the counter, and she was too busy trying to bring herself back under control to think about pulling away.

The front door banged open, loud enough for Regina to startle backwards as Snow called out, announcing her entrance. Those few seconds provided enough distraction for Robin to slip away, and Regina turned back to an empty kitchen, his presence marked only by the empty coffee mug across from her.

She mumbled something unpleasant in response to Snow and Emma's greetings, pushing past them to get up the stairs, back to her lonely bedroom, confused by her own behavior and by how unsettled she felt in the wake of her conversation with the thief.

All of his questions had touched something deeper than they should have, a part of her that he should have no access to. Her pulse jumped wildly at the base of her throat, like the beating wings of a bird as it struggled to stay aloft, and she sank down slowly with her back against the door of her room, breathless even before she saw the gift that he – the thief, the outlaw, _Robin_ – had left: a single apple, red as blood, balanced on the inside of her windowsill.

…

"I still think this is a bad idea," Charming muttered to the group as they watched Emma pour the last vial of sand across the threshold of the front door.

"I think they heard you the first nine times," Regina snapped back at him, though she was pleasantly surprised that everyone continued to more or less ignore Charming's repeated objections. It was happening. They were actually going to let her out.

She was still wearing the cuff, of course, and her captors had turned out in force today – the Charmings, Emma, Hook, and half of the thief's men, though not the man himself – to mind her while she walked the streets. Though the presence of so many people tasked with, essentially, making sure she played well with others during the excursion irked her to no end, humiliation was a price she was willing to pay for freedom, however temporary it might be.

"Okay, we're ready," Emma said, stepping back from the doorframe and motioning Regina forward with a small smile.

Regina hesitantly approached the threshold, trying not to visibly flinch as she crossed the barrier of Rumplestiltskin's spell and waited for it to throw her backwards – it didn't – and then she was flooded by the colors and sounds and tastes of the afternoon. Her eyes drifted shut as she breathed it all in, letting the sun and the air and the shadows play across her skin until the moment was broken by her flock of followers closing rank around her.

"Where do you want to go?" Emma asked.

"How should I know?"

"Right. Well, pretty much everything is along Main Street, so we'll see Town Hall, maybe stop in at the diner – "

"Don't tell me: if I'm good, you'll buy me a hot chocolate."

Emma's face lit up. "Hey, you remembered something! That's great."

"Wait, that's something you actually _do_?" Regina wrinkled her nose in disgust. "That's something _I _did?"

"Nevermind," Emma sighed, pulling away slightly to take charge of the party.

They walked in silence as Regina swiveled her head from side to side, letting her brain put names to all of the buildings she saw and trying to feel if any of them held importance or recognition for her. The residential neighborhoods stretched on longer than she had expected, and the clock tower that marked the center of town was still another street over when the screaming began.

The sounds of fear, of people panicking, were clear even from a distance, and the shouts were underscored by a deep rumbling – and grating and tearing – that signaled a startling amount of destruction.

"What the hell is that?" she asked the others, wondering if they had led her out here simply to leave her at the mercy of whatever was on the loose, and she was only slightly relieved to see that Emma and everyone else looked just as perturbed as she felt.

A short, round man suddenly came barreling around the corner, running full-tilt and not slowing down even as he approached, then passed, the group. She recognized Grumpy by his voice as he yelled over his shoulder, "It's the Snow Queen! She's tearing apart the town!"

"We need to get her back to the house," Charming said, wrapping his hand firmly around Regina's upper arm and starting to pull her away before Emma stopped him with a frantic shake of her head.

"There's not enough time – we need you and everyone else and as much manpower as we can find, _now_. She's coming with us."

If Charming was displeased by being undermined by his own daughter, he didn't argue, though he also didn't loosen his grip on Regina's arm as they all began sprinting towards the commotion. Regina, for once, found herself maddeningly in agreement with the prince – she didn't particularly _want_ to be dragged headlong into a battle that she knew nothing about and had no way to protect herself from. She supposed they were all fortunate that everyone considered her such a threat; each of her guards had come armed, and heavily at that.

The main street still bore signs of the damage she had inflicted during her own rampage, but those scars were now hugely (and literally) overshadowed by the three creatures smashing through cars and sidewalks and the occasional building with enormous white fists. They were made of snow – or ice, perhaps, given the hardness of their bodies – and though somewhat crudely constructed, their blocky, boulder-like forms were making quick work of everything in their path.

"Stay here, Regina, or so help me…" Charming hissed at her, pressing her roughly against a streetlight before running to join the others, drawing a sword that looked like it would be as useful as a toothpick against the snow creatures.

Her entire party had spread across the street, taking up defensive positions based on the range of their weapons. A girl in a blue dress was already battling the creatures, creating walls with streams of ice magic that were easily broken down, one after another, as the monsters swung their fists. Emma hurried to the girl's side, and Regina was startled to see that Emma had magic of her own – weak, chaotic sparks that spit out of her hands and burned brightly before bouncing uselessly to the ground, but magic nonetheless.

Regina barely had time to wonder if the girl in blue was the 'Snow Queen' responsible for the mess before another woman caught her attention by stepping out from the shadows that the enormous creatures cast. Her smug expression and the intricate jeweling of her gown – Regina almost could have mistaken it for one of her own, if she hadn't destroyed every white dress in her wardrobe long ago – left little doubt as to her identity, and Regina watched her curiously as she approached Emma and the girl. Whatever words they exchanged were lost in the cacophony of ice hitting ice, and so there was no warning for the rush of magic that the Queen used to hurl the blondes backwards, sending them rolling and scraping across the pavement for a good ten meters.

Hook beat her to Emma's side by a few paces and set about helping her up, and Regina didn't even know why she was running until she got there.

"Take off the cuff."

"What?"

"_Take off the cuff_."

"Why would we do that?" Hook asked stupidly, and Regina rounded on him.

"So I can _stop_ her, you handless wonder." She turned back towards Emma, one hand darting out to point at the girl in blue standing shakily beside them. "She can't fight ice with more ice, and I don't know what _you're _doing, and it looks like you don't either."

"How do we know you won't – "

Regina wasn't about to make a long, heartwarming speech about trust and hope – not ever, as she wasn't as foolishly naïve as the two idiots and their daughter, but particularly not _now_, when three snow monsters and their mistress were bearing down them all with deadly intent.

"You don't," she cut in sharply, and after a moment's hesitation and a searching look, Emma nodded to her.

She missed most of the mechanics of the removal of the cuff, darting glances at the placid but unmistakably malevolent face of the Snow Queen while Emma bent over her wrist, finally stepping back with the circle of leather in her hands, and Regina was free.

She caught Snow's face in the edge of her vision and turned slightly to look at her head-on. There was fear there, and it twisted something in Regina's gut, something with claws and teeth that wanted to sink themselves into that perfect white skin, and, oh, how easy it would be…but that madness passed, her eyes refocused on the snow-white monsters that had moved close enough to crush her under their limbs, and she breathed out, knowing what she needed to do.

Regina flexed her fingers, waiting for the familiar surge of her magic, and felt nothing. Nothing had happened. Her magic was gone, perhaps irretrievably, and the weight of that realization almost dropped her to her knees. She must have staggered slightly, for Emma reached out to steady her, one hand brushing against her elbow – flint striking steel, she was sparking, she was _exploding_, and the flames of her magic burst out of her with enough force to send Emma diving for cover.

The first blast tore the arm off of the nearest monster, the great mass of snow and ice avalanching to the ground and cracking through the top layer of concrete. She unleashed another wave of fire, reveling in the sheer power of it, letting her magic run over the snow creatures and seek out the vulnerable points of their bodies. They groaned, glaciers breaking apart, as she melted and dismembered them each in turn before she thought to target the Queen herself. By then it was too late, the Queen having retreated the moment the fight had soured for her.

Regina lowered her arms cautiously, surprised that the effort had not left her more winded, and remembered that she was not alone. Everyone left on the street – mostly the group that had accompanied her, though Robin and a few others had shown up at some point – had been there to fight, and now that the action was over, they stood around awkwardly, swinging unused weapons over their shoulders or in slow arcs by their sides.

Snow was the first to approach her, skipping nimbly around and over the debris scattered over the road, followed closely by Emma.

Snow grinned at her brightly, joyously, looking like the child Regina had saved all of those years ago. Wonderment battled with mistrust in her voice when she asked, "Why did you help us?"

"This is _my_ town." Regina cocked her head at them, baffled to hear the hint of pride that had crept into her own voice. "Isn't that what you keep telling me?"

"Well, not in so many words…"

Emma was grinning too, obviously pleased that her gamble had paid off, but Regina saw that the cuff was already in her hand, she was already reaching to snap it back around Regina's wrist, and that was enough for Regina to wrench herself away, staggering backwards as her magic thrummed through her in response to her fear.

She would not let them tame her again.

Emma and Snow were looking at her with concern, and Emma had just opened her mouth when Regina's defensive magic slammed into her, sending the blonde flying across the pavement for the third time in about as many minutes.

As Regina wheeled on the others, ready to fight anyone who came near, two small hands pulled at the fabric of her dress, and she looked down into the wide brown eyes and trusting smile of a child. He barely came up past her knees and put up no protest when she lifted him to her hip – in fact, his smile brightened, and as he threw his little arms around her, she smiled in return, reserving the triumphant edge of it for the adults ranged around her.

She heard the dismayed call – "Roland, no!" – before she saw the thief push his way forward, and she realized exactly who she held in her arms. _His son_. Her grip around the boy tightened, and she felt more than heard the crowd's collective intake of breath, but her eyes never left Robin.

"The cuff for the boy."

She would not hurt the boy (she didn't _think_ she would), but it was clear from the tense jaws, the placatingly raised hands that _they_ all believed she would snap his neck in an instant. Robin was unflinchingly calm, his hands held loosely at his sides as he regarded her, and if it hadn't been for his eyes, she never would have guessed how frightened and how terribly, terribly angry he was.

His eyes burned into her, twin wildfires that were almost hypnotizing in their intensity, and she wondered how anything so blue, anything so like water, could be so fiery.

Roland began to squirm, and she turned her attention back to him, angling her head close to his mop of curls so she could whisper to him without the others overhearing.

"Roland, does your father ever tickle you?"

He nodded enthusiastically, and she pressed her fingers into his ribs, feeling out the right spots, until he began to squeak and shriek in discomfort, pulling away from her and letting out a muffled, choked-with-laughter "R'gina, _stop_!"

Her eyes swept back over the crowd, and she registered the horror there, understood how the boy's cries could be mistaken for sounds of pain and fear from a distance. She watched as Robin's face paled, his hands tightening as he struggled to still himself, and she knew she had him.

"The cuff for the boy," she called again.

The thief wordlessly took the cuff from Emma, who had risen to his side, and came forward. He held it out to Regina, and there was a strange sadness in the gesture, as if he was giving up more than a piece of leather. As soon as her fingers brushed the cuff, he tore the boy away from her, taking (nearly sprinting) several large strides before he crouched and leaned back to check his son for injuries.

And she read the confusion in his frown as Roland looked up at him questioningly, already whining in his father's arms and pointing to her, stretching his arms out to her in a gesture of want. Robin snapped his head around to stare at her, studying her intently, demanding something from her, but she was already gone, disappearing into a cloud of purple smoke.

…

"I suppose it was too much to hope that she would come back here," Emma sighed, plopping herself down on one of the sofas in Regina's living room.

"What do we do now?"

"I think we all know what needs to be done." Gold's hands folded over the head of his cane, and though his expression remained serious, there was no mistaking the undertone of satisfaction in his words.

"I'm not so sure about that, Gold."

"Emma, she threw you across the street," Mary Margaret chided gently, as if her daughter was likely to forget the bruises already forming over her arms and back.

"I know, and I was fine. She didn't hurt me, and we all know she could have. Hell, she could have let the Snow Queen save her some trouble and kill us all."

"But she didn't," Mary Margaret said slowly, earning an exasperated snort from David.

"_This_ time she didn't. We don't know what she's capable of, and her magic seems stronger than ever."

Emma frowned. "Yeah, has Regina been holding out on us this whole time? That little display was some _no power in the 'verse can stop me_-level shit."

Hook clapped her on the shoulder and smirked when she yelped at the contact. "You're not helping your case any, love."

"She's not Regina, but she's not the Evil Queen either," Emma insisted, looking at each of them in turn until they dropped their eyes or nodded in agreement. "And we're not killing her."

Gold, clearly unmoved by her reasoning, shrugged as he limped to the door. He paused before crossing the threshold, fixing Emma with a look that chilled her to the bone.

"Suit yourself, dearie, but next time don't come running to me when she sets the town on fire."

…

Regina sat miserably in the mausoleum in which she had first awoken. Returning to the house was out of the question, and this was the only other place she knew in this world, the only other place that felt like hers, and so she had fled to it out of necessity, though she felt all the more exposed for being underground.

She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling less with the cold than with the magnitude of what she had just done. She had _won_, she had been freed both from her makeshift prison and the cuff, and she should be happy. Happy and vengeful, but she was neither of those things, and she wasn't sure what was wrong with her. She had yearned for freedom, clawed her way to it, and now that she had it, she felt like it would drown her. She was adrift, and alone, and cold in a way that had nothing to do with the sinking temperatures outside.

The scuff of boots against stone made her stiffen, and she pulled her magic to her fingertips, ready to strike as soon as the intruder made himself known. A head bobbed into view first, the rest of the body lost in the shadows of the hall, and she caught a flash of green as he stopped beneath one of the sconces along the wall.

It was Robin.

His mouth was set in a grim line, but he raised his hands chest-high when he saw the expression on her face.

"I wouldn't have hurt the boy."

The words slipped out the sides of her mouth before they were fully formed in her mind, her desperate desire to explain herself to him overriding the usual scorn that ruled her tongue. "He was…" _safe _would be too much of a lie, she supposed.

"Leverage," he said darkly.

"Yes. Leverage."

"And that makes it all right, then, to frighten a child? Just to get what you want?" His voice filled the chamber, its strained note of exasperation ringing in her ears even after the echo had faded.

"Did he look _frightened_ to you?" she challenged. She rose with one practiced movement and watched his cheeks color, his teeth biting into his bottom lip as he looked down, and she didn't know if the gesture signaled shame or arousal on his part. "I wouldn't expect you to understand, thief."

"Oh?"

"People throw a tiger in a cage, toy with it, forget that it's something wild, and then everyone wonders why they get bitten when they set the tiger free."

"And in this analogy, you're the tiger?"

The question was playful, the corner of his mouth twitching, and Regina couldn't bear his mockery, as gentle as it was.

"You made me helpless!" she snarled, alarmed to find that tears pricked at her eyes, threatening to break loose. "You put that cuff on me and didn't care that it _hurt_, and then I saved this damn town, and you were all so ready to lock me back in my box, like I'm nothing more than a disobedient pet. Like you don't owe me anything."

Her voice was rough with emotion, and though Robin already looked stricken by her outburst, she couldn't help spitting, "Where's the honor in _that_, thief?"

"I don't suppose there is any, m'lady."

"I wouldn't have hurt him," she said again quietly.

"I know."

There was a long moment of silence as Robin ran a hand through his hair, then his eyes wandered up to touch hers. "The others will be looking for you, m'lady. What should I tell them?"

"Whatever you like."

He nodded, awkwardly lingering in the doorway as if measuring the distance between them, as if wondering if he should risk the passage. Then he turned on his heel and left her.

She needed to find somewhere else to take shelter, to plan her next move, but all she could think about was what might have happened if he had dared to cross the room and what _Regina_ would sound like on his lips, for, more than anything, she wished Robin would call her by name, just once.

* * *

><p>Look for the conclusion after the New Year. Thanks for reading, and, as always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!<p>

I'm still trying to catch up on _rise_ as well - not having Regina and Robin meet while under the Shattered Sight was such a missed opportunity, wasn't it? I'm working on it.


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